Comment by dan-robertson
2 hours ago
I disagree with the grandparent comment, but you could imagine a few teacher related causes:
- Maybe the better teachers retired or quit due to burnout/better opportunities (the pando surely increased both of these and I think one could imagine reasons for better teachers to disproportionately stop teaching). One thing we observe is the best decile being a lot less affected than the average or worst, which vaguely lines up with the hypothesis. I didn’t try to look into attrition or retirement rates.
- There could be a new teaching method that is popular with teachers, teachers’ unions, administrators, or governments but which is actually quite ineffective. My weak understanding is that the quality of education research is very poor and that evidence-based decision making for how to teach is extremely rare, so this also feels plausible. I think many HN readers would have seen stories about math teaching in SF public schools, and there’s also the positive case of Mississippi seeing great successes from some teaching methods that are supported by good evidence. In some sense this isn’t really a case of teachers being bad.
There is a concerted attack on the teaching profession, that's why education is terrible.
Teachers at the middle / high school level are not allowed to fail kids anymore. Parents are extremely litigious in America, suing schools over every little thing. Admins don't want to deal with that + their school's funding is tied to attendance / outcomes, so together they pressure the teachers to lower their standards.
Add into this the tech ologopoly trying to get kids hooked on their products young, pushing for chromebooks and google classroom when there have been numerous studies showing handwriting is important for retaining information.
The quality of student (on average) has also decreased thanks to tech. On average, kids are watching brainrot while their parents are trying to make ends meet, instead of reading or educating themselves.
Teaching is a thankless job. You have lots of unpaid hours (teachers need to prep lessons outside of school time, need to grade papers outside of school time, etc). I think a lot of people also severely underestimate the effort needed to keep 30 rambunctious kids on track. It truly drains you.
Given all this, there is no surprise at the outcomes.